Malaria is a disease of poverty. The social and economic impact of malaria is unacceptably high. Sub-Saharan Africa bears the brunt of disease burden: a heavy mortality toll that can reach up to two million lives each year – especially among
children under age five and pregnant women. Deaths are preventable in over 90% of cases with effective antimalarial drugs.
The pharmaceutical industry has largely withdrawn from the active pursuit of new drugs for malaria. The extremely high costs involved in discovering, developing and registering pharmaceutical products to current regulatory standards (800 million to 1.2 billion U$ per drug) requires that the returns on drug sales be very high to be commercially justified. Between 1975 and 2004, only eight out of 1556 new registered drugs were antimalarials. This long standing sluggishness in drug Research and Development (R&D) of antimalarials has emerged as a critical global public health issue.
Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a nonprofit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, established to creatively address the lack of commercially driven innovation to improve antimalarial chemotherapy options. With over 80 partners around the world, MMV operates as a Public Private Partnership (PPP). MMVs partners include its donors (both public and philanthropic), its researchers (academic and pharmaceutical) and the many public health policy staff and national officers.
As of April 2007, MMV has 35 projects in its portfolio, four of which are in late- stage clinical development. Besides R&D for New Chemical Entities (NCEs), MMV is supporting the development of a number of combination products, especially Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT).
The ultimate measurement of MMV’s success from the public health perspective is the positive health impact that will be apparent due to available antimalarial drugs. For MMV, the initial aim was one registered new drug every 5 years on average with the first new drug to be registered before 2010. In fact, MMV is set to exceed this aim. It is now likely that 3 or even 4 ACTs will be registered by 2009. “New drugs” also include projects such as the development of paediatric formulations (syrup or dispersible) of existing antimalarial tablets. In spring 2008, a dispersible formulation of Coartem® will be registered and available for the public health market at a target price lower than 1 U$ (adult) or 0.50 U$ (pediatric) per treatment, initiated and supported by MMV together with Novartis.
SDC has assisted MMV since its foundation in 1999 through contributions of CHF 1 million per year until 2004. During phase III, from 2005-2007, the contribution decreased to CHF 833’333 per year, because the original SDC support for MMV was considered “seed money”. For the coming phase IV, a core contribution of 800’000 per year (1% of the total yearly MMV budget) is planned. As stated in prior phases, SDC’s financial support should continue at least until the first new antimalarial drug developed by MMV is registered in Africa.
